HOMILY FOR TRINITY SUNDAY YEAR C (3)

Word of God



HOMILY FOR TRINITY SUNDAY YEAR C

THEME: THE MYSTERY OF GOD’S OWN LIFE

BY: Rev Fr Stephen ‘Dayo Osinkoya

HOMILY FOR SUNDAY JUNE 12 2022

 

 

Proverb 8:22-31
Psalm 8:4-9
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Today we celebrate the most sublime mystery of our faith and the most central mystery to the Christian faith. To be Christian in the first place is to believe in the mystery of the Blessed Trinity: “Three persons in one God – The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is at the heart of what Christ came to reveal and how he teaches us to live. However, though we believe in Three Persons in one God, yet we call it a mystery because this aspect of God’s nature, in a very profound way, is beyond the grasp of the human intellect. It is a truth we could never know by reason alone.

Therefore, today’s celebration calls for and encourages a reflection on the mystery of God’s own life, as he has revealed to us and how we too have been called to share in this God’s own life.

At the beginning of creation. God revealed himself to us as the Father, the creator of the universe. When humanity fell under the slavery of sin, and the need for salvation became imminent, the Father continued to seek us. He called Abraham and called a people to himself out of all the peoples on earth. God called Moses and gave a covenant forming them into His own people. The first reading (Prov. 8:22-31) described the wisdom of God. Some other passages in the Bible identify this wisdom with God’s Torah (or Law or Commandments (Sir/Eccls. 24:23; Bar 4:1). God’s wisdom or his Commandments are one of the ways we see God seeking his people before Jesus. God’s commandments, his wisdom, is one way God reached out to his people to lead them to himself. The Father continued to seek his people by sending the prophets to call his people back to live according to the covenant when they were wandering away.

At a time in history, the Father revealed the great masterpiece of his plan to seek us; he sent his Son Jesus to buy us with his blood (Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24; Acts 20:28; Rom 3:24-25; 5:9; God himself became man in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son, who became the Redeemer of mankind.
The second reading of today points at this fact by saying, “…through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God, since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace…” (Rom 5:1).

The final part of God’s plan to save us is the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after Jesus had ascended into heaven. After the work of redemption had been accomplished, God continues to remain with us His people in the person of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, the one who sanctifies us to be like God our Father. In the gospel reading of today, Jesus points at the quality of the teaching of the Holy Spirit, saying: “But when the Spirit of truth comes He will lead you to the complete truth, Since he will not be speaking as from himself But will say only what he has learnt…” (John 16:13).

To conclude this reflection, let me highlight some of the doctrine of the mystery of the Trinity we celebrate today.

1.     From the Incarnation of God the Son, we learn that: God the Father and God the Son are “consubstantial.” This means that they are “one and the same God” (CCC 262). That is, they are the same substance or essence. And we learn from “the mission of the Holy Spirit” that “the Spirit is one and the same God,” too. (CCC 263).

2.     The three persons in God are all to be “adored and glorified,” as the Nicene Creed puts it. The Church terms this adoration *latria*. This is “the veneration due to God alone for his supreme excellence and to show people’s complete submission to him, . . . given only to God, as the Trinity, or one of the Divine Persons, Christ as God and as man, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Holy Eucharist.”

3.     “By the grace of Baptism . . . we are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth in the obscurity of faith, and after death in eternal light” (CCC 265).

4.     “Now this is the Catholic faith: We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is one, the Son’s is another, the Holy Spirit’s another; but the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal” (Athanasian Creed, quoted in CCC 266).

5.     “Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do” (CCC 267). But within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son’s Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 267).

“O Father who sought me
O Son who bought me
O Holy Spirit who taught me.” This beautiful prayer to the Trinity, quoted in a book on Celtic prayer, is a beautiful summary of the mystery wet celebrate today.

Let us therefore, today and always ponder in our hearts how the  Father is seeking us because he has made us a special creature, a creature made in His own image and likeness. Let us also ponder on how the  Son bought us and how the Spirit continues to teach us.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.

*Rev Fr Stephen ‘Dayo Osinkoya*

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